Scandal of the 'gay' asylum seeker rapist

When Gabriel 'Jerry' Vengesai arrived in Britain, he had a terrible tale to tell.

The tall, rangey Zimbabwean was fleeing his country because he was a homosexual in a land where his sexuality was illegal and gays were condemned as 'worse than pigs and dogs'.

He sought asylum in this country because, he told immigration officers, if he was returned to Zimbabwe, he faced violence from the youth militia as well as inhumane and degrading treatment.

Vengesai, who was 35 when he arrived in May 1996, presented a very persuasive case and, after a series of assessments by the Home Office, he was given permission to remain.

The processing of this immigrant — one of 30,000 Zimbabweans applying for asylum that year — would have remained just a line in government statistics had Mr Vengesai not come to the public's attention for a very different reason.

Earlier this month, this alleged homosexual, who was diagnosed as HIV positive soon after arriving in Britain, was jailed for a minimum of 13 years for the violent rape of a 17-year-old girl.

He committed this offence while on bail charged with having under-age sex with a 14-year-old schoolgirl, leaving her pregnant. Vengesai did not use protection on either occasion — he told police that as a male he was entitled to sex and women needed sex — and it was only by chance that neither of his victims nor the child contracted the virus.

Judge Tom Longbotham, sitting at Winchester Crown Court, told Vengesai he was such a risk to women that he should be deported at the end of his sentence.

For the girls concerned it is a personal tragedy, but many will see this case as the tip of the iceberg of abuses of the immigration system on the grounds of sexual persecution.

Vengesai's case highlights the fact that virtually nothing is done by the Home Office to verify such claims.

The Daily Mail has discovered that even the most cursory examination of Vengesai's past in Zimbabwe and his lifestyle in the UK would have revealed that he was not homosexual at all — but a predatory heterosexual.

It appears to have gone unnoticed by the Home Office that when he landed in Britain, Vengesai had three sons and a long-term girlfriend in Zimbabwe. During the subsequent five years before he received his prized 'Indefinite Leave to Remain' Vengesai faced three separate Home Office assessments and tribunals — none of which seems to have taken note of his sexual behaviour in Zimbabwe or in Britain.

Nor, astonishingly, did they notice that within five months of arriving in Britain, he had gone through a register office wedding with a British woman.

This whirlwind marriage — presumably an insurance against deportation — was discovered by the Daily Mail in public records and has now been reported to the police by the 'bride' named on the wedding certificate.

The distraught mother-of-two from Surrey says her identity was stolen by Vengesai and an accomplice for the wedding on October 11, 1996, at Slough Register Office.

The 'bride' denies she married Vengesai, and says she was in another, long-term relationship with the father of her young children at the time, a fact confirmed by her ex-partner.

Apart from the bogus marriage, it also appears to have escaped the Home Office's notice that Vengesai had several female lovers and a regular, if turbulent, relationship with a Zimbabwean woman who left him when the rape allegations were made.

The Home Office claims that staff are trained to spot whether a person is telling the truth about their sexuality.

'Sexual orientation issues are covered in training for asylum staff, specifically in interview skills training which focuses on homosexual/ transgender applicants who may be fleeing persecution,' says a spokesman.

But no one in authority seems to have noticed Vengesai's surprisingly heterosexual lifestyle.

Perhaps they should have asked his former customers at the popular African bar he ran in Slough High Street in Berkshire in the late 1990s.

The news that Vengesai was claiming to be gay has come as something of a shock to them, particularly the women who became lovers or close friends.

As far as they were concerned he considered himself a ladies' man who preyed on his female customers.

One Zimbabwean woman said: 'It was an African pub where they played our music and served African food. It was very popular with people from Zimbabwe, but I didn't think much of Jerry because he was a drunk and he wasn't organised.

'He certainly liked women. He chatted everyone up, including me. He wasn't my type, though, because he was dirty and scruffy.

'My friend was also very fastidious, but I said to her: "You clean him up. He's the owner of a pub and he needs a woman to tidy him up and get him organised."

'So she did everything. She used to go and help him out. But she had a lot of trouble and they were fighting all the time.'

She was amazed to hear about his claims of a homosexual past. 'He used to dance in a gay way sometimes, but that was it.'

Vengesai's accounts of life in Zimbabwe varied considerably. It is known from official documents that he is the son of a mechanic from the south eastern region of Masvingo, but his story of his journey to Britain has taken several forms.

To some he claimed he had been rescued by a white British man. One friend said: 'Before he came here, he told us, he was working as a security man.

'He said he came over through a building contractor who brought him here. He said he was working for him there and they came over here together.'

Vengesai told others he had been a student in Zimbabwe and there was also talk of him making batteries for a living. Whatever the truth, he quickly made himself at home in his new country.

After his bogus marriage, Vengesai took on the Floral Arms, a small colourful bar that quickly earned a reputation for noise and disruptive customers.

In fact the behaviour of the clientele was so disruptive that Thames Valley Police closed the bar in March 2000 and Vengesai, who was being treated for alcoholism and HIV, found himself without a job.

He moved to neighbouring Hampshire to be close to his girlfriend and it was there, in May 2005, that the 44-year-old targeted the 14-year-old daughter of a woman friend.

The girl told the court she had met Vengesai in a service station and went back to his flat. She claimed she told him she was 16 so he would give her a cigarette and she had consensual, unprotected sex with him.

To her family's horror, the girl became pregnant and had to be tested for Aids.

Her distraught mother said: 'What he has done is just disgusting. For him to do such a thing and to do the same thing to another girl is really heartbreaking.'

She is scornful of Vengesai's claims that he is homosexual. 'He had a girlfriend. They had been together since around 2000. She is Zimbabwean and in her 40s. They used to live together but there was trouble and the police had to be called to the house.'

It was while he was on bail for the offence of under-age sex in October last year that he met the 17-year-old girl and her friend in an amusement arcade and enticed them back to his flat.

There, he took the teenager into his bedroom, forced her to undress and raped her, leaving her injured.

When accused of the attack, Vengesai told police the girl had initiated sex, adding: 'I think she needed it. She was in need of having sex.'

The girl had to wait an agonising six months before being told she had not contracted HIV.

In a statement after sentence was passed this month, the girl's mother said: 'This man came to Britain on the pretext of being a practising homosexual, who on arrival in this country was diagnosed as HIV positive.

'These are not the actions of a homosexual... especially as Mr Vengesai has a long-term girlfriend.

'This man has now been imprisoned and upon release we would expect the immigration office to act quickly and deport this hideous man so that he can do no further damage to the young girls in our communities.'

A spokesman for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate said: 'We don't comment on individual cases. If people have been given sanctuary here, they are privileged and it is quite unacceptable for them to abuse our hospitality by committing crimes.

'All asylum decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Our case workers have to decide whether an individual does face persecution in the country they are fleeing and that will be assessed and then assessed again before a tribunal.'

Homosexuality is becoming a common claim by asylum seekers because it is difficult for officials to counter. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said it was 'extremely difficult to prove if someone is homosexual', but urged tighter controls to stop fake claims.

'Appalling cases such as this undermine public confidence in the asylum system as a whole,' he said. 'Obviously it is difficult to prove if someone is homosexual but the Government needs to take a much firmer approach with these cases. There are many countries in the world where homosexual activities are illegal and where people can use this as a pretext for claiming asylum.'

But some of the cases are easy to challenge. For example, Carol Ajoh, from Jamaica, claimed she was a lesbian and was fleeing persecution.

In fact, she was a mother of six and married a man while in this country waiting for a decision on her asylum plea. She was not deported because to have done so would have violated her rights to family life under the Human Rights Act.

Vengesai's bogus marriage was presumably an attempt to ensure the same outcome, should his claim of homosexuality fail.

He showed no emotion in court as his terrible acts and lies were exposed during the ten-day trial. Smart in a dark suit and white shirt, he showed no emotion as the judge spoke of his 'uncontrollable' sexual urges and the significant risk of him 'causing death or serious personal injury by committing further offences'.

Astonishingly, his deportation to Zimbabwe is not a foregone conclusion. 'He will be a candidate for consideration,' an immigration official said, 'but we would have to be sure his human rights would not be breached by sending him back.'

The mother of the 14-year-old is practically speechless at the idea that a rapist will be protected.

She shakes her head and says: 'Will they still see him as a victim after what he has done? What about protecting his victims' rights?'